painting by numbers
by mirai3k
Summary: At the age of eight, Mikoto decides that he wants to fly. (kidfic; AU)


**Notes: **my new year's resolution may have been to write more happy fic for these kids. otherwise, i feel like my one-author's-note-fits-all for this fandom is: i don't know. it just happened.

x

At the age of eight, Mikoto decides that he wants to fly.

He tells Totsuka he is going to do it one day, asks Kusanagi if they can find out how, and no, he doesn't mean by plane or parachute-just wants to do it without anything holding him up, like gliding and soaring in air, the way that birds do.

There's something about the shape of clouds that always has his attention, something about the stars at night, and Kusanagi laughs, tells him, "Get your head out of outer space, silly. That's not possible."

Kusanagi is ten years old and Very Intelligent, Mikoto's mother says (but Mikoto just thinks it's kind of annoying because he always finds reasons to ruin Mikoto's fun). Meanwhile, Totsuka makes bird noises and plane noises and manages to find a kite that belongs to his big sister and tries to fly it to no avail. (Totsuka is six and makes no sense to anyone half the time but he manages to dig up some neat stuff out of nowhere every once in a while. Also snails. Lots of snails. Which, to everyone's surprise, Kusanagi is _terrified_ of. It is kind of hilarious. They are both kind of hilarious. Mikoto would say that he likes them but the truth is that he doesn't know a life without them.)

x

Kusanagi is an only child and lives with his grandmother who runs a teashop and who has taught him how to make things like omelets and sandwiches with some help but, by the time Kusanagi is fifteen, he manages all that and more on his own.

Mikoto, at thirteen, still wants to fly but he settles for sneaking out to the rooftop instead, right up until Kusanagi comes to find him and rolls his eyes, says, "You can't keep running off like that and your teacher is looking for you. Also, I'm gonna start high school soon and Totsuka's too spaced out to keep a good eye on you."

Totsuka has now moved on from snails to goldfish. He has thirteen of them in a giant tank that his older sister is sick of cleaning. She says as much and threatens to flush them all down the toilet one day when Mikoto and Kusanagi are over. Totsuka looks like he is about to cry and Kusanagi sighs, says that she is right, and adds that if Totsuka starts taking care of his own fish, Kusanagi will try to come over and help him clean up until he learns to do it on his own.

(Kusanagi also has a bit of a schoolboy's crush on Totsuka's sister but she is dating a college boy who wears starchy shirts and frameless glasses and so she turns Kusanagi down politely when he is old enough to ask her out without being laughed out of a building.)

The fish die one by one as they do and, by the time Totsuka is twelve, only one remains. He names her Obscura and only names her when the others all die. She is a kuro demekin and he boasts about how she has outlived them all.

Kusanagi and Mikoto hold his hands and in Kusanagi's other hand is the plastic bag full of water and upside-down Obscura; they take her to the river and she is the only one Totsuka cries for.

x

When Mikoto turns fourteen, Totsuka buys him a bird. It's a yellow canary and Mikoto has absolutely no idea what to do with it.

Kusanagi ends up taking care of it for the most part to no one's surprise. He keeps it in his grandmother's teashop during the day. Sometimes, Mikoto takes it home on the evenings or weekends, frowns at it, feeds it, and keeps the cage on his bedside table. Other times, Kusanagi takes it upstairs into his apartment above the teashop where he and his grandmother live.

Mikoto is seventeen when he wakes up one Sunday morning to a quiet cage. There's a jumble of feathers at the bottom of the cage, obscured by birdfeed and other clutter. He feels a sick sinking dread and can't look for it or at the cage any longer and so he covers the cage with newspaper and takes it to Kusanagi, runs a hand over his face and feels guilty and horrid as he stands at the entrance of the teashop and says, "I screwed up."

Kusanagi takes it without a word, thankfully does not point out how Mikoto looks shaken out of his skin or like he might cry any second, or so it feels like.

"I'm sorry," he says, to Totsuka later, even if there's a part of him that's a little upset Totsuka gave it to him in the first place. _If you hadn't then it would never have— _ but Totsuka smiles crookedly and maybe he's thinking the same thing. Mikoto doesn't know, doesn't want to know.

What he does is put a hand on Mikoto's arm and say, "Hey, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay."

x

For Kusanagi's twentieth birthday, they take the train to a small seaside town.

The water is calm in the afternoon, glittering a bright turquoise, and then rough, blue and black in the evening.

The food stalls blow their minds and they go through at least a dozen, and then they rent a room for the night because they're still cheap kids out on borrowed money and small-time savings.

They push two twin beds together and jan-ken-pon for who gets to suffer the annoying crack in the middle. Kusanagi loses and later says it was on purpose because he gets to be in the middle. Mikoto rolls his eyes and turns his back to him, tells him to stop saying such stupid things just as Totsuka laughs, and sings happy birthday, muffled a bit against the cotton of Kusanagi's t-shirt and the polyester sheet and the covers.

Among the three of them, Kusanagi happens to be the only stationary sleeper and so Mikoto wakes up in the middle of the night with his head on Kusanagi's stomach anyway and Totsuka's foot half in his face. Grumbling, Mikoto turns his back to their tangled limbs, creates distance again, and goes back to sleep.

He wakes up again and it's barely after dawn and it's to the sound of Totsuka mumbling in his sleep with his head virtually at the foot-board now. Mikoto yawns and looks out the window, rubs his face and heads out to find Kusanagi on the pier.

"You're up early." Kusanagi says. "That's probably good. There's a shrine I wanted to swing by today."

"Food first," Mikoto mutters.

"Of course. " Kusanagi chuckles, adds, "I had a good day, yesterday," without fully turning to face him.

"Good." Mikoto doesn't know what else to say, hardly ever does, so he sits, feet dangling some inches above the water.

There are stones nearby but not within armslength; he has an urge to pick one up, skip it in the water, watch it coast, fly, far away. Kusanagi had taught him how when he was twelve, the first time he'd gone to a beach; Totsuka and his sister had made some ridiculous sandcastles too close to the shore and they'd washed away before Kusanagi could take a picture.

Absently, it occurs to him that he's never been able to teach Kusanagi much of anything. Probably, he never will.

Kusanagi laughs, cutting into the silence, says, "Sometimes, I get scared when you get quiet like that. I mean, you're quiet a lot but it's not often you get to thinking."

"How's that scary?"

Kusanagi shakes his head. "We're getting older, you know." And really, that isn't an answer _at all._

"So?" and Mikoto knows his voice comes out rougher than it means to because he's feeling the way he did back when the canary died, angry and frustrated and unable to do anything about _anything. _It threatens to well up in his throat.

"You still wanna fly, don't you?"

And he wonders if that is what this is about then. "Sometimes," Mikoto admits, though the urge is not as bad anymore and he feels the need to make this clear somehow. "Not as much as before."

"You know, we'll never stop you," Kusanagi says, smiles out into the sunrise and Mikoto wants to remember him like this always. "Just make sure when you go that you visit every once in a while."

In the background, Mikoto can hear the door open and Totsuka's footsteps on the wood.

Mikoto huffs, a quiet laugh, "'m not going anywhere."

"Not anytime soon, no," Kusanagi says. "but you might want to, one day," and his grin takes a sudden turn for devious as he pushes Mikoto off the pier.

"Not alone," Mikoto gasps, shaking water out of his hair and tugging at Kusanagi's ankle, dragging him under too.

There's the echo of a sound of surprise before he sees Totsuka looking at them from the pier, agape, but it's not long after that there's a third splash in the water and Totsuka is laughing at the way Kusanagi's hair is plastered to his face and how his own shirt has ballooned up and stuck to him in other places.

x

On the way to the train station, Totsuka almost picks up a stray cat. Almost. Kusanagi threatens him with fourteen kinds of blackmail to make him stop and then five more to make him stop sulking.

The ride back is quiet, sparse land with trees whipping by, more and more coastline behind them. They sit and share earbuds beside him, conversation growing quieter as they drift into sleep.

And Mikoto wishes he had a way of saying it, explaining it.

Yes, he still wants the sky sometimes but they're the reason, the gravity, that makes this, whatever it is, more than enough.


End file.
